“Keep West Palm Term Limits” PAC forms

CREEM (The Committee to Reelect the Mayor) will have organized, competing voices this fall.

West Palm Beach residents Richard Shepherd and Jon Fogt formed a Political Action Committee on Wednesday that will raise money between now and November to educate voters on why they believe term limits must be preserved.

This comes a day after a majority of the city commissioners said they would be willing to place a referendum on the November ballot to give the mayor a third term in office, even though the petition drive to extend term limits is failing.

“The taxpayers and voters have already spoken about this,” said Shepherd, who runs Polonious, a West Palm Beach-based investigative software company. “We passed a resolution in 1991 that put term limits on mayors for eight years, and there’s a really good reason for that. At a local level you end up with some very cozy relationships, often some quid pro quo dealings that escalate over time. When you have a powerful mayor or a strong mayor as we do, it’s especially important.”

Shepherd is a veteran proponent of term limits, running the 2002 petition drive that eventually established term limits for county commissioners.

“We were seeing increasing corruption in the county commission, and you know exactly what’s happened since then,” Shepherd said. “Three county commissioners are currently in jail. The two most vocal opponents of term limits were (Mary) McCarty and (Warren) Newell, and they’re sitting in jail right now.”

Clarence Anthony, director of the rival PAC to extend term limits in West Palm, said he welcomes this new PAC and is looking forward to debate.

Anthony said the corruption argument is separate from term limits.

“We cant base our governance and our cities based upon people who misused the trust of the public and did wrong things,” Anthony said. “I don’t think term limits fix or correct that problem or ever will correct that problem. It’s not a term limit issue, it’s just an abuse of public trust issue.”

Anthony admitted that it could be easier for a long-time mayor to abuse power because of name recognition, but he believes voters should know a mayor well enough by the time he or she has finished a second term.

“It gives them a record that people are able to see what they’re doing and whether it’s good or bad for the community,” Anthony said. “You find yourself in a situation where you end up having inexperienced people dealing with real challenging issues, and that’s not good for the City of West Palm Beach. We’ve got sunshine laws, and we’ve got those laws to protect the citizens.”

Shepherd said his “Keep West Palm Term Limits” PAC is only in the beginning stages, and will expand in size.

“What the commissioners have to know is that this is political suicide for them,” Shepherd said. “Everywhere across the country, politicians have totally underestimated the impact of trying to repeal term limits. It is one of those issues that is very sensitive to voters.”